


Nightmare and a Dream

by SenkoWakimarin



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Dan uses his thinking brain for once, M/M, Needles, Rorschach is a Stray Cat, Stitches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:28:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27427948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: Rorschach is a nightmare all by himself.
Relationships: Dan Dreiberg/Rorschach
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	Nightmare and a Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Throws old fic and runs.

Rorschach is a nightmare all by himself. A flurry of shadow and silence, his comings and goings and rough gravely greetings threaten to drive Daniel insane. The eternal unknowing, the unending worry, and the sense of guilt that accompany each growled farewell are maddening.

"Fine by myself," the smaller man growls bitterly, the ink of his supposed face swirling in sharp eruptions that put Daniel in mind of angry outbursts. He knows that Rorschach will never admit to wanting help, and he knows he cannot go back to the way things were, but the bitterness in his former partner's voice makes him wince internally. Sometimes, when he's alone on the steps of his basement or sitting at the desk working on some knickknack he'll never use but wants to build anyway, he thinks that Rorschach visits just to burn him with guilt.

Of course, for the most part, he knows it's not true. Rorschach doesn't make people feel guilty, he doesn't think that way. His visits are mysterious breaks in Dan's increasingly lonely life. It's disruptive, because Dan has become used to the loneliness, is sometimes even comforted by it. He intentionally keeps all his friends at arm's length, because he is afraid of making a commitment to them that he will eventually falter on. He has never been as good with people as he is with mechanical things, and would much rather be continuously lonely than constantly expecting abandonment. At least if he's lonely, he's not hurting anyone. Or getting hurt.

He can't put Rorschach at arms distance, though, and this disturbs him. With Rorschach, it's all or nothing, and it's on the other man's terms entirely. When he's there, he's there, a quiet, tense bundle of muscle and lethal intent and bunched leather. His presence is both limited and all consuming, because when he's there, Daniel is immediately aware of it and yet can ignore him if he's working on something, but when he's gone, Daniel is suddenly hollow. He is not used to wanting people around, on wishing someone would stay when they say they're going to leave.

There is absolutely nothing to gain by trying to persuade Rorschach to linger, to give his 'work' a rest for a little while. There is nothing to gain in encouraging Rorschach's appearances with open windows or extra tins of food in the cupboard. There is nothing to gain from sitting in semi-comfortable silence with the masked man, in the basement or in the dining room over a cup of coffee.

There is nothing to gain, and yet he always buys more cans of tuna and beans that he will ever really eat on his own. He leaves the sugar cubes in a bowl, where they are easily accessed and always in stock. He makes sure to have coffee on hand, in the off chance that Rorschach will agree to stay long enough for a cup.

It always goes back to memories. Rorschach never really needed Daniel, or Nite Owl for that matter. All Nite Owl had been to him was an extra pair of hands and an occasional voice of reason. Someone to help break codes and keep an eye out on patrol. He likes to think they worked well together, despite all their various and intense differences. Because when Rorschach moved, Daniel moved with him. When Rorschach fought, Daniel fought with him, back to back. When Rorschach had thrown his last punch, Daniel was only seconds behind. Imperfect synchronization that was somehow more beautiful for its inaccuracy.

Daniel needed Rorschach. After the first few months of crime fighting, he would have given up without any laws forcing him, if it weren't for Rorschach's firm belief that they were doing the right thing. Daniel clung to his partner, dependent on him as a remora is dependent on larger fish for survival.

For as long as Dan's known him, it's always been Rorschach's nature to take more on himself than he has too. It is because of this that he has become the nightmare he is- trying to fight every evil that caught his attention. Daniel does not know which case shattered his old partner's mind, which case gave him the sudden stark, cynical sense of the world being a place of absolutes. Daniel doesn't want to know which case did this. He thinks about it sometimes, wondering if he could have been there; if he could have prevented this downward plunge.

He wakes up screaming to this day from night terrors. He refuses to let himself remember what exactly it is that he sees, but some of it slips through anyway. Rorschach ripped limb from limb; Rorschach caught by the cops, in Sing Sing, riding the lightning; Rorschach clinging to his arm, bleeding and slipping and so far beyond his help it's petrifying.

Rorschach is a nightmare that plagues him in waking, his lack of presence leaving Daniel's imagination to fill in. To imagine him dead in the street, finally overwhelmed by the sheer volume of goons, beaten bloody and left to rot in the gutter, in an alley, in a dumpster with the other forgotten, obsolete things.

Rorschach is also the dream of a nearly forgotten concept; the illusion of an ideal that has slipped beyond Daniel's grasp. Rorschach embodies the strength and courage and determination that Daniel had hung up with his cowl and mask. The smaller man is gruff and violent and suffers from a regrettable lack of self-grooming, but he's also the bravest and most honest human being Daniel has ever had the pleasure of speaking with.

So he leaves his basement door unlocked and doesn't complain when he finds his front door broken in or a window pried open. He buys more food than he needs and stocks his pantry with things he doesn't particularly like, and just smiles (trying not to look too relieved) when he comes into his kitchen and sees his friend sitting there. Because somewhere along the lines, Rorschach has also become a parasite. The kind that clings to the skin, travels through the blood, and sneaks up into the brain. The kind that sticks and doesn't let go, and eventually is needed for survival. Because if it's ripped out, it rips out what was originally there to begin with.

The nightmare bleeds into reality once again, early on a cold February morning. He’s still half asleep when he hears the window creak open, something thudding gracelessly onto the floor. Listening with muddy, half-conscious intent, he hears heavy footsteps drag themselves up the hall and into the bathroom.

Glancing at the alarm clock, he sees the time glowing calmly at 4:26 AM; too early for Rorschach to have finished patrol and be looking for food. And anyway, maybe he’s imagining it, maybe he dreamed it; Rorschach has kept his distance these past few months and Dan can’t imagine him just showing up out of the blue.

Sitting up in response to some small, nagging voice in the back of his head, he runs a hand through his hair and observes the clumps of snow melting on his hall carpet, dimly regretting having the hardwood floor replaced. Then he hears something shatter in the bathroom, the louder thump that can only be a falling body, and suddenly he’s not tired at all anymore. He stumbles the first step, but is otherwise graceful, rushing down the hall and to the bathroom.

Pausing at the door, which has been pushed half closed, he hesitates for a moment. It’s Rorschach, he knows, but it's Rorschach injured, which can be tricky. Tricky, but—he can see a heap on the floor that is quite clearly his fallen friend, and something has to be done. He pushes the door the rest of the way open without knocking and observes the scene in silence for a moment. There’s blood on the floor, smeared and mixing with water from the melted snow, and the room smells like filth and copper and antiseptic. Scuffed and grimy, the trench has been tossed carelessly into the bathtub, the suit jacket on top. The man himself is face down on the tiled floor, breathing roughly. All string and wire, stretched over with pale freckled skin, this is a body Dan is familiar with.

Stepping into the room, he notes two other things that strike him as strangely poignant: there is a bottle of isopropyl alcohol shattered in the sink, and Rorschach is missing one glove. He asks what’s happened before he’s even all the way in the room, his voice stunned and faraway to his own ears. Rorschach’s fingers grapple weakly with the slick floor before he manages the strength to pull himself up in a sort of half-assed pushup. On his knees with his head hanging down, his body shudders with each drawn breath. Dan kneels at his side, placing a hand on his back, and is somehow surprised when he is shaken off. It’s not so much the sentiment as the strength of the motion.

“Jesus, man, what happened,” he asks again.

Still kneeling close, he can hear the low sound rumbling out of Rorschach, like the warning growl of an injured and cornered dog. The sound quickly gives way to a harsh, wet cough, and it is only then, as Rorschach’s arms start trembling in earnest, that Dan realizes the other sound he’s been hearing, the soft pitter-patter of dripping liquid, is in fact blood rolling from Rorschach’s body and hitting the floor.

“Oh, Christ,” he mutters numbly, putting his hand on one shaking shoulder. This time, though the muscles beneath his palm tense, Rorschach doesn’t struggle, allowing Dan to push him up and back. In the end, the masked vigilante ends up in an undignified sprawl, his shoulders against the bowl of the toilet and his legs tangled in front of him.

He’s wearing an absolutely filthy undershirt over the usual slacks; the shirt may have once in life been white but has since greyed and is now slowly spreading with crimson. It’s badly torn in three places that he can see, the flesh beneath mottled and angry where it’s not soaked in blood. Judging by the long gash on Rorschach’s left shoulder, these are all knife wounds, and he’s thankful for that because he’s not sure he can manage bullets on his own anymore. Everything is still bleeding, despite obvious attempts at staunching the wounds, and there’s still more blood rolling from somewhere beneath the mask, sticking to Rorschach’s neck and pooling in the hollow of one sharp clavicle.

Dan wants to help, but nothing is more difficult with Rorschach than physical contact, especially since the passing of the Keene Act. But the man’s breathing is labored and muddy, as if he’s contracted pneumonia, and Dan knows he has to do something. Finally, he gives in and asks, “What can I do to help you?”

Keeping his head bowed, Rorschach rolls his head in Dan’s direction, regarding him through the mask. It is, of course, unreadable, and Dan is too tired to try putting meaning into the shifting pattern. Instead, he just goes with the skepticism he expects, not finding himself surprised in the least when Rorschach growls, “Don’t need help.”

Not surprised, no, but he does find himself suddenly fighting down anger and some swirling bitterness. It’s only through rigid self control that he remains absolutely still, schooling his expression into something stern without letting the flash of irritation slip through. “Don’t give me the hard-ass shtik, Rorschach,” he says, sitting back on his heels. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t need help.”

The smaller man gives another angry growl, lifting his head up just slightly-- and Dan suddenly sees the bruises there, splayed across his neck. He doesn’t give it away on his face, even as understanding and the attached self-loathing sink in. It’s an old nightmare, too easy to see: Rorschach once again outnumbered by knife wielding punks, distracted by too many enemies, caught by someone much bigger, held aloft by the throat- never mind how the hell he got away, just thank god he did. “Needed help an hour ago,” he snarls, his mask rippling with angry energy.

It would be easy to give in and admit he feels terrible and that he’s sorry he wasn’t there and he wishes he had been. Easy to spew out all the things he thinks he knows Rorschach wants to hear. But there’s a sharp knob of steel in him yet, and he’s not willing to take the blame for something that is not entirely his fault. He leans closer to the other man, brow knitting in an old, fierce expression only used to intimidate suspects or convey disapproval to his partner. “Bullshit,” he lets his voice sink into a similar growl, all too familiar for the years without practice. This is Nite Owl talking, and the tilt of Rorschach’s head says he understands. “Too bad. I’m here now, so just let me help you.”

The silence is not comfortable, and it stretches for what feels like a very long time before Rorschach utters a soft sound of consent, “ennk,” and sinks slightly back. His hands come up, the ungloved plucking at the leather of the gloved, baring the pale, calloused hand beneath. His knuckles are bruised and chapped bloody, making his fingers clumsy as they pluck at the hem of his ratty undershirt. Gently, Dan pushes his hands away, giving him a look that combines stern-no-nonsense with reassuring-don’t-worry.

Something in the tension to Rorschach’s body speaks of pain and restless, suppressed anger, but it also speaks of fear, and that hurts Dan more than anything. Carefully, slowly, he peels the shirt up, helping Rorschach sit forward so he can pull the ragged thing over his head and toss it toward the trash bin. With it off, he can see the true extent of the damage, nausea and bitter anger making his hands flinch back into fists. Looking at this cruel painting of deep purples and yellow-tinged blues and slick crimson on its grime-smeared and scarred canvass, he cannot suppress the rush of old anger. Watching Rorschach’s chest rise and fall in a struggle for air, Dan wants to go out and find whoever did this and very violently extract some kind of retribution.

The feeling is irrational, he knows, because Rorschach is more than capable of dealing with his own fights. Impotent as it may be, it lingers, making him want to hurt someone.

He moves from Rorschach’s side just long enough to soak a cloth and pull his first aid kit down from the cupboard. Each breath tightens the skin around the smaller man’s wounds, keeping them open and bleeding. When Dan presses the warm cloth to his friend’s chest, Rorschach hisses softly through clenched teeth and arches his back. His bare feet slide against the wet floor with an audible squeak. Dan doesn’t let up, even though a small part of him wants to, because even though this hurts it has to be done.

When he sets to scrubbing around the wounds, he’s perhaps a bit more rough than he needs to be. But he’s so angry—angry at whoever did this to his ex-partner, angry at Rorschach for being so goddamn stubborn, angry at himself for not being there to keep his stubborn ass safe. He doesn’t realize he’s hurting the other man until Rorschach gives a strangled note of agony.

As always he has been, he is quick with an apology, his hands becoming gentle with an attempt at rationality. The masked man doesn’t relax, but he does calm a little. With the better part of the mess scrubbed away, Dan can see to do the next part of his job.

Pulling the needle out of the package and threading it, he eyes the knife wounds to assess the best plan of attack. He hesitates again, feeling Rorschach’s eyes on his hands. He is afraid to start; it’s been a long time since he had to stitch anything, much less flesh, and this is a particularly bad set of wounds. Like most puncture wounds, there is a great deal of bruising and soft-tissue trauma around each laceration, meaning each punch of the needle will be even more brutal. It will hurt Rorschach terribly- not as bad as some of the broken bones he’s set or dislocations he’s reduced, but it’ll be bad.

A rough hand lightly brushes his wrist, stiff and awkward and brief, as if nervous by even such a light touch. “Have to, Daniel,” Rorschach grinds out in that gravelly voice, “Will do if you can’t.”

“No,” Dan replies firmly. “I’ve got this.”

Painfully aware that the sterile needle is becoming rapidly less sterile the longer it hovers over Rorschach’s skin, he begins.

Suturing is a bit like riding a bicycle. You learn a rhythm to the motion that comes back to you even after years without practice; base muscle memory. The first couple stitches are uneven and crude, but they quickly translate into something passably professional. It’s still ugly, a fact which leaves Daniel inexplicably bitter.

He curls tightly over Rorschach; face inches away from the skin he’s working on. As it always does, the proximity of their bodies, combined with the enforced intimacy of the moment, raises a crop of gooseflesh down his back and over his arms. He forgets to be offended by the other’s ripening stench, he forgets to be upset by the subtle winces he causes with each punch of the needle through bruised flesh, he forgets to want to kill whoever did this. He forgets to loathe himself for quitting.

All that’s left is the moment, strung along with tiny, insignificant details. The glint of silver, light whickering off the hooked needle as it slides in and out of the smaller man. The tug of thread as it’s pulled tight, pulling the wound closed with it. The subtle twitch of warm flesh under his palm as he rests his free hand on an unwounded region of flesh, taking unconscious liberties.

When at last he’s finished, tied the last stitch and clipped the thread, he wipes his bloody fingers on his pajama pants and gets up to rinse the cloth again. The shards of the lost bottle dance in the water, lending the steam a faintly sterile smell.

They’ve been quiet for the past eternity, the hostility drained out of them with the tedium of pain and healing. Daniel is unwilling to break that as he mops up the little remaining blood, watching in dull fascination as Rorschach’s skin shifts over his muscles, as he twitches just slightly with each pass of the cloth. Maybe it’s not such a nightmare, because Rorschach isn’t swatting his concern away or grumbling about indecency or threatening to get up and go. He’s just… letting Dan do this, and it’s nice.

Quite a bit of blood has slipped out from under the mask, trickling sluggishly down to collect in the hollow of Rorschach’s collarbone. With only a minor pause, Dan folds the cloth over and starts mopping that up as well. He’s very gentle, feeling his friend’s breath hitch against his knuckles as he brushes over the bruises. The blood has started to congeal, and he distracts himself trying to figure out how to scrub it away without causing Rorschach discomfort. And there’s more blood still under the edge of the mask- he should know better than to try, but it’s almost an accident, his finger slipping just slightly underneath, swiping with the cloth. There and gone in no more than a second, but Rorschach flinches back like Dan’s trying to rip it off.

“Rorschach,” he says, trying to sound more comforting than reproaching. He’s still poised close, the cloth hovering somewhere over his friend’s neck, frozen. “Just let me look, alright?” he suggests, shifting slightly. He can already hear the growl of protest forming, can see the defensive curl, and so barrels on ahead with his argument. “If the blood’s any indication-”

“No, Daniel,” Rorschach says with all the brusqueness Dan expects.

Sitting back on his heels, Dan huffs a sigh, blowing the air out slowly as if the measured exhale can return the calm that is rapidly depleting. “Christ, man,” he says, his voice somewhere between exhausted and exasperated. “If it’s leaking out from under the mask, it can’t be that high up. Just roll the damn thing up like normal and let me see.”

Rorschach simply turns his head, trying stubbornly to move away. There is, of course, nowhere to go; he manages only to dig his shoulders against the toilet. “Not lethal. Will fix later.”

Gripping the smaller man’s shoulder, Dan once again manages the self control to keep from shaking his friend, exerting the swelling irritation on the clench of his fingers. “Just what the hell are you hiding, man?” With the acoustics of the tiled bathroom, the words sound awfully close to a shout.

With a sharp twist, Rorschach extracts himself from Dan’s grip, only to double over in pain at the effort, exhaling his agony through once-more grit teeth. “Not hiding,” he spits the word like it’s a curse, breathing harshly and tilting his head in a way Daniel remembers translating to a glare. “Trying to-”

There have been many moments in their relationship where Daniel has started to lose his temper with his friend. The inspiration is nearly always from some implied slight on his morals or intentions, on Rorschach’s ability to trust him, and once again, Dan finds himself at that point where rationality takes a backseat to resentment. 

His hands once again find Rorschach’s shoulders, clenching hard against the flesh; the bristle of fresh sutures feels strange against his palm, and the feeling of them should mean stop. Instead he pushes Rorschach upright, hard against the toilet so that when he leans close they’re face to mask. It lasts for a moment; his lips part to speak, to tell Rorschach to quit being such a dick about this and trust him for five goddamn minutes, and then his hands have been knocked away and there’s hard, painful pressure against his sternum.

Quite suddenly, he’s on his back, one of Rorschach’s hands pressing heel-first into his breastbone with agonizing force, the other pulled back in a fist that’s set to break his nose, cheek bone, or jaw. The movement is too quick to be anything but torture for the smaller man, and he’s perched awkwardly, straddling Dan’s stomach. Frozen, the raised fist shakes, creating a line of tension that runs all through him like an over-wound violin string, waiting for the moment to snap. Even with the mask on he looks so anguished and there’s no way he can have moved like that without pulling his stitches and in the awful seconds stretching between them all Dan can think is that this is strangely exciting in all the wrong ways.

Unable to even draw breath comfortably, Dan waits for the blows to start falling, anticipating the pain of the oncoming punch and trying not to think of this as being pinned, to remember that this is an attack. Something must show on his face, because Rorschach makes a sound low in his throat that’s part disgust and part something Daniel isn’t sure of. The masked man collapses down, his hand moving from a fist to a claw in a fluid flash, pressing against Dan’s shoulder as if to hold him still. 

He can feel Rorschach trembling, feels the tension drawing out tighter and tighter between them, feels the need for words and that Rorschach has some choice ones, feels something hot and wet against his hand when he tries to push up against the compact body and oh god he really did pull something is all he can think. Neither of them speaks, and the tension builds, builds, and then breaks- Rorschach’s hands grip his shoulders for just one final moment of pressure-point-seeking misery before the smaller man is on his feet, moving like wildfire through the bathroom. Everywhere all at once; a flurry of angry, brutal motions as he grabs his coat and throws it on over bare shoulders, covering freshly bleeding wounds.

Dan thinks, I have to stop him, but doesn’t move at all except to rub idly at the bruise blossoming on his chest. He watches Rorschach cram his bare feet into shoes and notices the swirl and cloud of blood in the puddles on the floor, stirred up as Rorschach kicks through them. There is one last moment of stillness, of Rorschach lingering against the doorframe- either sagging with fatigue or held back by something else- but Dan no more than opens his mouth to call him back than he disappears into the hallway.

Panic, he’s found, lends a certain grace to the body, and he fluidly gets to his feet, chasing after the smaller man fast enough to catch the tail of his coat snapping in the wind as he jumps from the open window. By the time Daniel makes it to the window, there is no sign of the masked man left, save for a few dark splatters in the snow.

With numb hands, Dan shuts the window, latches it. He stares at the floor, at the marks left from the melted snow, and slams a fist into the wall at his side. He doesn’t want to acknowledge the ache splitting open his ribs as anything other than the bruise he’s been left with, or the stinging in his eyes as anything other than exhaustion.

The bathroom needs to be scrubbed out now, and he should probably mop the water out of the carpet before any permanent damage can be done, but right now he’s sore and tired and all he wants is his bed. It swallows him up in warmth, comforting enough that he can ignore the way the sheets stick to the places where Rorschach’s blood has dampened his skin.

That was the last time I’m ever going to see him, he thinks, and because he has nothing better to do, he glances at the clock and notes the time at 5:19.

He gives a soft curse and shuts his eyes, willing the world away with images of trembling limbs and comforting hands dancing behind his eyes. The nightmare never ends, no matter how complete it seems.


End file.
